Él

Made in 1952, between "Robinson Crusoe" and "Wuthering Heights," this may not be one of Bunuel's major films, but it contains several of his key themes and recurring images, starting with the ceremonial washing and kissing of feet. The film also goes into the politics of submission and domination, the effects of long-term sexual repression, and -- of course -- sewing.

Bunuel understood obsession and was able to convey it on screen like no other director. As irrational as his characters can get (and Francisco gets plenty irrational in this film), Bunuel knows that we all have our hangups which seem normal to us, no matter how grotesque they may look to an outside viewer. (There's a reason why the alternate title for this film is "This Strange Passion.")

In Mexico, the wealthy, religious and leery middle-aged Francisco Galván (Arturo de Córdova) is battling in the justice to retrieve the possession of real-estates that belonged to his ancestors in the beginning of the Twentieth Century. When he sees the young Gloria Milalta (Delia Garcés) in the church, he becomes obsessed by the woman, unsuccessfully courting and stalking her. He follows her and sees Gloria with her fiancé and his acquaintance, the engineer Raul Conde, having lunch in a restaurant. Francisco schedules a ball in his mansion and invites Raul and along the night, he seduces Gloria. They get married and in the honeymoon, Gloria discovers that Francisco is virgin and has a sick jealousy for her. Along the years, the emotionally unbalanced Francisco oscillates between a passionate husband and a disturbed paranoid until the day Gloria leaves him and he has a mental breakdown.

"El" is a very simple and melodramatic film of Luis Buñuel about sick jealousy and paranoia. The plot shows the usual trademark of this great director, with religious element and the surrealistic paranoia of the lead character in the church, but is not original like most of his features. Arturo de Córdova and Delia Garcés have stunning performances, giving credibility to their characters. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Alucinado" ("The Hallucinated One")

This tale of a pathologically jealous husband, whose delusions of cuckoldry teeter over the edge into madness, ranks with BELLE DE JOUR and the early surrealist films as the first rank of the Bunuel canon. The ending, which has audiences screaming out loud in a mixture of gruesome delight and horror, would probably drive Brian DePalma to death by alcohol if he saw it. Brian, don't watch, okay?

This was the first film I decided to watch from director Luis Bunuel and I had no idea what to expect from EL going into it, but it really intrigued me in different ways -- not only with the general story, but also in the visual style with which it was realized. There were surprises at every turn, and the acting by the leading man Arturo de Cordova was superb. What began as a pretty standard-looking (though nicely photographed) soap opera wound up transforming into a striking melodrama with some oddly disturbing moments. I don't know how indicative this one movie is of Luis Bunuel's general approach, but if the others are anywhere near as interesting, I look forward to trying them out. He seems ahead of his time, judging by this film.

*** out of ****

Following your advice, I recently 'relented' to buying from Alapage the two Luis Bunuel Double-Feature discs released in France by Film Sans Frontieres. After watching them in their entirety, I cannot believe that I, who consider Bunuel my all-time favorite director and one of the true masters of the medium, have waited this long to acquire these DVDs. Actually while Alapage listed these DVDs at EUR25.73 on their site, they only cost me EUR21.51 each (excluding EUR12 shipping charges). So, if there is still anybody who has not purchased them yet, now may be the time to do so!

Since I had never watched EL (1952) before, it was the first one to go through my DVD player. It was a chilling parable of an insanely jealous middle-aged man played with acute intensity by Arturo De Cordova. It afforded Bunuel ample opportunity to make practical use of overt Freudian symbolism without lending the film a heavy-handed air of pretentiousness. While there are some critics who consider it as merely 'an engaging, minor work', I regard it as being among Bunuel's finest; arguably, with this film, Bunuel reached the culmination of his work in Mexico, but it also looks forward to similar sequences and themes he would tackle later on in his career, especially TRISTANA (1970) and, his last film, THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977).

EL was beautifully abetted by another of his low-budget Mexican films, the great black comedy THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ (1955). Again, critical reception was a bit muted in some circles, dismissing it as 'just a throwaway oddity' typical of Bunuel's films of the period. However, it is much more than that: it is certainly very funny if you can accept its macabre sense of humor. It allowed Bunuel to create some of the most memorable images in all of his films, especially the celebrated dummy incineration scene, which could have been "inspired" by a similar scene in Michael Curtiz's marvelous MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933) which Bunuel must have seen while working at Warner Bros. in the Thirties. A similar instance of this eclectic approach on Bunuel's part can be found in the "walking hand" sequence in his THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962) - one of my favorite Bunuels - which harks back to an identical premise in Robert Florey's THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946), another Warner Bros. horror melodrama. For me, one of the enduring assets of THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ is the charm and great beauty that was Miroslava Stern (who played the part of Lavinia and was the model for the ill-fated dummy). Tragically, she would take her own life a mere two weeks after the film's release with her body, ironically enough, ending up cremated!

Both the print utilized and the transfer for both films were adequate enough, and perfectly acceptable under the circumstances. However, EL's overall visual and aural qualities where distinctly superior to those of ARCHIBALDO which suffered from excessive specks and slight audio dropouts at times, but were never so alarming as to dispel from one's viewing pleasure of the film.